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Gyu-ri Christensen
Name: Gyu-ri 'Riri' Nam Christensen Gender: Female Age: 18 Grade: 12 School: George Hunter High School Hobbies and Interests: Korean culture and superstitions, medicine and nursing, sewing and knitting, singing and choir, acoustic guitar, chess, board and card games: especially poker and mahjong, fashion and thrift shopping, military issues, and politics Appearance: '''Gyu-ri is 5'0", a Korean girl with an overall light skin complexion. She has a tiny rectangular body, with proportionately small and stout legs and small shoulders, flat chest, and featureless waist and bony hips. She daily wears enough in the way of bust enhancers to be a notable difference from her natural body shape. She has bony joints and little muscle, and on average she weighs about 105 lb. She has a slightly oblong face with a rounded but defined chin and a sharp neck. She has strong, high cheekbones and slight dimples when she smiles. She has thin and pale lips that are an off-shade from her skin tone if she doesn't use lipstick and gloss. She has a short button nose. Her eye color is a grayish green, barely distinct in hue unless up close. Her eye shape is round and her relatively large eyes are her most stand out feature. She has untamed eyebrows. She has prominent under eye dark circles. Her facial skin is very clean and she has almost no blemishes. In general facial and body shape she is often told she is a spitting image of her mother, albeit far shorter. Gyu-ri's hair is naturally jet black and slightly wavy when long. In her Sophomore year she elected to bleach and dye her hair a muted hue of orange, and she nowadays keeps it cut to shoulder length and splits it into a broad ponytail held by ribbons and bows. Gyu-ri rarely wears makeup, though she is trained in its use. Gyu-ri wears relatively inexpensive clothing, but her color coordination and sense of flattering cuts is strong and makes her appear more well dressed than the cost of her clothes might otherwise suggest. She tends to trend towards conservative wear even when physically active, covering at least half arm and full leg. She prefers jeans for the sake of practicality but will wear them in many colors, and because she does not sweat much naturally she likes layering: blouses , tees, long-sleeves, camisoles, polos, and the like. She wears a plain black bead bracelet on one wrist often. Her ears are pierced and she wears small silver ring earrings. Gyu-ri carries a replica medic bag hung around her shoulder with her day to day in lieu of a backpack or purse. Gyu-ri speaks with a voice as tiny as her appearance implies, high in octave, slightly squeaky and breathy naturally, she has a slight twang of Southern accent. She has an excellent singing voice, smooth and mellifluous, with a trained two point five octave soprano range. When she sings her Southern accent typically becomes heavier on the vowels. She has absolute pitch. She speaks conversational Korean. On the day of the abduction Gyu-ri was wearing a well-pressed white long-sleeve button up polo, left open to show a red tee shirt under which is a white camisole and nude push-up. She wore black skinny jeans, and bright red lace-ups with grey highlights and streaks. She wore her usual bracelet and earrings, and a faux silver necklace with a skinny faux diamond gem. She brought her medic bag. She pinned her hair up with a fist-sized tied red bow with white polka dots. '''Biography: Gyu-ri was born August 6, 1999, a year before her little sister Ji-hyun Christensen. They were born to Nam Mi-jeong and Clyde Christensen. Mi-jeong was the cynical and ambitious daughter of evangelical members of Yoido Gospel, swept off her feet by the charming innocence of Clyde who a 28-year old Tennessee native stationed as a drill sergeant with the Eighth. They eloped to America in 1996 when Clyde's term of service ended. Mi-jeong faced severe disapproval from her parents and elders over her choice of life partner and contact between them ended when she left. Mi-jeong was a successful pharmaceutical sales rep while she was alive. The couple moved from base to base almost every year, moving all over the South and Midwest of the United States. Clyde spent another six years on active duty as a drill sergeant while Mi-jeong worked mostly over the phone. Gyu-ri was passive and quiet as a baby. She was timid and shy but obedient when it came to new things like potty training and her first days of school. She developed at a roughly average intellectual and physical pace and she was a healthy child. Gyu-ri was spoiled by her father from a young age, both she and her younger sister were her father's beloved princesses. As for her mother Gyu-ri would observe her working, either at housework or hustling at her job, and Gyu-ri was from a young age both impressed and intimidated by how her mother manipulated her demeanor to win others over and get what she wanted. Her mother's tendency to emotionally inconsistent, sometimes praising, sometimes cold, confused Gyu-ri significantly. Living on a military base Gyu-ri was from a young age also well indoctrinated into military life. It improved her natural sense of discipline, and she was always sympathetic towards the soldiers and felt connection with their unique plights and points of view from a young age. She was never the most patriotic due to her mixed heritage, feeling uncertainty when her peers pointed out she was different-looking, but she always considered herself a military-positive girl. Gyu-ri didn't watch cartoons or play outside quite as much as children her age tended to. She was usually interested in following her Mom and Dad around in taking care of household chores. Early in her childhood Gyu-ri derived a childish satisfaction from helping others: her parents, her teacher in her preschool, her friends. Gyu-ri was fairly popular for how helpful she was. Her passive nature meant she was also fairly easy to impress into doing risky things like breaking rules. However intervention from her mother quickly enforced in her the foolhardiness of such doormat-behavior, but she also became less social in addition to learning to not be easily manipulated. Her friends, furthermore, were changing year to year due to the nature of constant base reassignment. Gyu-ri could never be used to having intimate friends around for long, her family served her better in that regard. Thus she became something of a shy loner in her childhood years. In her early elementary years Gyu-ri was of course too small to do the big house chores like vacuum and cook, but her father taught her an important skill his own grandmother had taught him: he taught her to sew. She went through a phase of putting colorful patches on her clothes, and found sewing enjoyable as it engaged her natural propensity to be dexterous. She won praise from her parents in her age-advanced designs that pleased her significantly, and the act of sewing calmed her with it's repetitions. As much as her mother liked to praise her and pay attention to her, those attentions could also be negative. Mi-jeong had a very Darwinian outlook on the world, she was classist and strongly meteocratic, and she imparted those tendencies onto Gyu-ri's pliable youth mind. She taught Gyu-ri that hard work was all the morality that mattered, what she herself had learned to get ahead as a career woman. She openly rejected some of Gyu-ri's more innocent and altruistic claims in the good of her friends. Mi-jeong set examples like looking down on househelp, and shortchanging people with cold displays of domineering. Gyu-ri would be shocked, but take those lessons to heart at the same time. She also proved to be very ambition oriented and paid very close attention to her little girl's grades and intellect. As the elder sister Gyu-ri would catch the brunt of the criticism as she entered grade school, any non-perfect results were passive-aggressively scrutinized. Gyu-ri was afraid to show weakness to anyone except Ji-hyun, and she developed a streak of at times obsessive perfectionism, working at homework or even her hobbies or chores for long periods to time just to match what she believed were her mother's high expectations. Cyde was submissive to Mi-jeong's child rearing designs and did not intervene. Clyde's parents helped the family settle down when they were fresh from the plane, and they were a close knit part of the family. They lived in Chattanooga and would commute down and help with raising the girls. Gyu-ri had plentiful exposure to her grandparents when she was young, they doted extensively on their granddaughters. Gyu-ri's grandmother, a decade younger than her husband and an art museum director, helped Gyu-ri memorize the recipes for the foods she liked most like sweet cakes and pies. Gyu-ri's grandfather was a doctor with his own small family clinic and engaged Gyu-ri's mind with stories of saving people from accidents and diseases, he would read her through some of his accumulated texts and papers, explaining things in kid-friendly language. Gyu-ri was fascinated by the oddities of the human body, though it was at the time only interesting trivia she didn't truly understand. Gyu-ri came to associate time with her grandparents as a particular source of joy, and nostalgia in her later years. Their favorite family activity was board games. Mi-jeong had a good poker face and taught it to her daughters. Even Gyu-ri developed some aspect of her acting skills, learning from a young age about the more cynical uses of her feminine wiles. Gyu-ri especially enjoyed the stimulation from the clacking of mahjong tiles, it was her favorite game and she'd even play it against herself for hours at a time. It's rules are dearest to her heart to this day, but after awhile her grandfather's history with chess took precedence, by the time she was in the second grade Gyu-ri was playing and studying it properly. Gyu-ri considered Clyde's parents her only grandparents, but she held out some hopes that Mom's own parents would somehow enter her life. Mi-jeong herself assured her daughter it would someday happen ‘when they had enough money to make her idiot parents eat their words'. Mi-jeong remained proud of her Korean heritage and culture and imparted those things on Gyu-ri: recipes for foods like homemade tteokbokki and dakdoritang, the language, and also insights into Korean superstitions. In this case mother and daughter were especially alike, neither were religious in contrast to Clyde and later on Ji-hyun, but the two were both very strongly superstitious. Gyu-ri found that she was easily taken by fear-mongering by her mother about ‘bad luck' so she learned to cook lucky foods and avoid bad luck even at great cost to herself. The family permanently moved to Chattanooga when the girls were in fourth grade as Clyde was approved to transfer into the recruiting battalions. In a new school Gyu-ri proved pleasant and eagerly subservient enough to the whims of her peers, but still skeptical and clever enough, to win the approval and affection of the girls in the school who were more the aggressive sort. Her friends liked to affectionately call her ‘their little puppy' for being loyal and dependable. She was aloof at first, but over time as she grew more used to the stability of people not constantly moving away, she became intimately close to some friends. Her favorite hobbies with her friends at school, who were often less inclined to play chess or mahjong or sew with her, usually involved singing, at sleepovers or at karaoke parties hosted by the richer girls she was friends with. Gyu-ri had a good voice from a young age even untrained, and she was regularly encouraged by friends and their parents to formally sing and aim to make a job of it. Gyu-ri was personally shy about it even though she enjoyed singing, she felt too in the spotlight when she was trying anything solo. Her mother personally disapproved of the thought, considering it an impractical career pursuit. In school bullies and teasers annoyed with her goodie-two shoes nature cropped up occasionally. Gyu-ri tended to be quite bothered by them for how sensitive she was but she kept those feelings to herself, preferring to project strength and poise as her mother had taught her. Gyu-ri's favorite extracurricular activity in her later elementary school years was chess. She was happy to win the praise of her grandfather for her advancing skills. In school proper she was lured into the chess club by its relative unpopularity, thus meaning she didn't feel too nervous about the possibility of being watched. Her first scholastic chess tournament was nerve wracking due to the high attendance, but she was accompanied by her grandfather, and further mollified by the polite demeanor and manners of the children she played with. She placed top ten out of one hundred in score, and was satisfied with her performance. She attended more age-appropriate tournaments in her last years of elementary school with her families encouragement, Gyu-ri was enthusiastic to study and improve as she felt well supported by friends and family. It was the first time she'd felt a profound self-interest in something that she did for her own personal gain and pleasure. She maintained solid results, achieving a FIDE rating of 1400 at official over-the-board tournaments and 1600 with an online account. She would even put top priority on studying openings and tactics in her free time, only superseded by studying for school and homework. This became an issue, however, as some of her friends were jealous, guilting Gyu-ri for spending less time with them over a hobby. Her mother also began to voice concerns about the impracticality of Gyu-ri's hobby, as Gyu-ri was plateaued in skill and Mi-jeong loudly believed further time spent on it was wasteful. Gyu-ri caved under pressure, attending her last chess tournament in the spring of her sixth grade year. She felt some resentful helplessness over how her hobby had been essentially ended by others, but she kept those emotions to herself. Gyu-ri entered middle school with a limited circle of friends and limited influences consisting of a crowd of the more petty and gossip-driven girls in school or close family friends. As she grew more bodily self-awareness she turned to her friends because she had an interest in fashion and developing her own aesthetics. She also began to appreciate gossip, especially as she began to cultivate personal irritation with the majority of her peers, finding them shallow and vapid and difficult to relate to. Over time she became more inclined to be mean and petty. Bitching out people with friends over a game of cards or food was definitively another thing Gyu-ri picked up from her mother over the years. Gyu-ri's also found in puberty that she began to develop sensitivity to environmental stimulus. She acquired profound dislikes for certain scents, foods, and many of her tastes like her childish sweet tooth were rapidly annihilated. She became conscious of nutrition, much to the irritation of the rest of her family she began to nag. Gyu-ri's relationship with her mother in particular at this time was generally more tentative, as puberty grew Gyu-ri's sense of rebellious independence. Gyu-ri felt more confused and resentful concerning her mother's harsh and unforgiving tendencies. Gyu-ri remained quiet and kept things to herself, but Mi-jeong sensed she was losing influence over her daughter, which she actually approved of due to her philosophical outlook. Mi-jeong continued to try and guide her daughter, and the two came to passive aggressive clashes sometimes, Gyu-ri having no other way to express herself given her generally passive nature. Meanwhile Gyu-ri remained one of her father's princesses, he was attentive and dedicated to her even as he remained passive and non-committed to helping her out with her relationship with her mother. In Gyu-ri's free time during middle school she sometimes followed him to work, he split hours between two recruiting offices in Chattanooga and Nashville. She became something of a odd regular fixture in poker games with young women and men on their way to basic or lounging around waiting for their ASVABs, though she was loathe to play when betting and drinking was involved. She remained sympathetic to the plight of the military and was educated on the politics and issues, like her father she nurses a profound disapproval of political institutions handling of the military. She began to consider careers in the military at the time, though she was off-put when her father warned her against it when she told him of her ambitions. Gyu-ri began to take over the chores, half due to her inherent need to be helpful and half because she insisted that her way of doing them was more thorough than either of her parents. She became somewhat obsessive and ritualistic about her style of doing things like ironing and washing, she tended to be repetitive and repeatedly clean things that were already clean, as it calmed her day-to-day anxieties from school. She also rearranged the house to have more of an ethnic Korean bend, collaborating with Ji-hyun's artistic and religious sensibilities. Gyu-ri became the houses primary cook, finally putting into practice all the recipes her mother and grandmother had imparted upon her. She discarded the things like pastries and fried foods, she had a preference for healthy cooking and carefully monitored macronutrients, caloric intake, so on. She became something of a nag at the dinner table. It was on Mi-jeong, Clyde, and Ji-hyun to eat their less healthful cravings outside of the home, as Gyu-ri took over the daily grocery shopping. From this point on Gyu-ri would consider herself the head of the household in some respects, and Mi-jeong and Clyde would even take her opinions on the budget as Gyu-ri proved precociously stingy and responsible fiscaly. Gyu-ri maintains an odd mentality about the rebalancing of power, when pointed out how odd it is a attention-shy girl like her helps run a household she points out she does it because she feels the compulsion that she has to and she does not especially enjoy it. A family tragedy struck weeks into her Freshman year. One of Mi-jeong's differences from her elder daughter was a dangerous irreverence for health in contrast to Gyu-ri's neurotic obsessions with it. Mi-jeong worked long hours, smoked, and liked to ignore illnesses and assume they'd resolve themselves naturally. This time around Mi-jeong complained of a stiff neck and slight disturbances in her vision, but kept going out to do chores and see friends despite Gyu-ri insisting it be checked out. In this particular instance Gyu-ri was right. Mi-jeong developed fatigue and a severe rash and finally checked into a clinic. She had to be rushed into the ER, but she had developed septic shock due to meningitis and severe internal hemorrhaging had already begun. Mi-jeong was declared dead hours later. When Gyu-ri and Ji-hyun were alerted they were in class and Clyde was in Nashville. The devastating event sent ripples through the family. Clyde was besides himself, unable to face his daughters he holed himself up in Nashville for a month, working long hours and barely taking calls. Grandma and Grandpa stepped in, living in the house while the grieving occurred and helping make preparations for Mi-jeong's funeral. Gyu-ri herself was torn. She felt both extreme guilt and resentment all at once: that she hadn't done enough, that her advice had been ignored, that the person she'd loved and feared the most in her life was gone. She buried herself in her housework and studies and retreated from friends in school for a half year. She was so afraid of confronting what had happened that she barely spoke to even Ji-hyun for a while. When she finally did she spilled everything to her sister Gyu-ri eventually promised to forge her own path in life and not be like Mi-jeong had been. Despite that promise Gyu-ri's mild neurotic tendencies were amplified by the incident, she found a number of psychosomatic symptoms began to plague her. She often felt dirty and itchy when socially or emotionally stressed, she took obsessively ritual showers. She began to suffer from negative intrusive thoughts, often with a paranoid bend, at times even ordinary events were filtered in her brain in anxiety inducing manners. She was somewhat self-aware about the nature of her mind changing, but found it difficult to talk about and suffered the problems in silence. Her Freshman teachers, who had generally been close to her due to her gentle demeanor and academic striving, quickly noticed her disengagement and had been made aware of the home situation. When they encouraged her to go to the school counselor she dutifully took advantage of the anonymous service. However, while she was diligent and compliant in attendance of scheduled sessions her passive and inward nature proved difficult to make a breakthrough with. She would only be compelled to attend irregularly, and she never personally garnered much from the service before eventually working up the nerve to stop coming of her own volition. She eventually returned to her friends at school, but they would note she was quieter, more easily frustrated, and more willing to be stubborn and bullish when she was angry. Gyu-ri found she now had the ability to dismiss and belittle even the closest of her friends, in the process venting a lot of the true criticism towards them she'd had boiling under the surface. She picked fights apathetically and pettily. In some way she had consciously chosen to reject her mother's philosophy of callous realpolitik, and ironically became like her anyways by being more openly unforgiving and harsh. Gyu-ri's reputation survived as she still remained inherently reliable and loyal, but she was definitely less friendly than she had been before, turning rogue in a sense as she found she cared less about keeping up appearances. She was less shy and timid, but now perhaps not enough shy and timid to play nice. She became more ambivalent towards results in her schooling, finding perfectionism was now less motivating and more burning out emotionally. However out of habit and to distract herself she continued to overload her schedule between friends, school, and home life as she now became the home's sole homemaker. This is when her habitual tendencies to stay up too late and push herself past her weak mental and physical limits further strained her. Even when not busy she'd sometimes refuse to sleep, distracted by her own meandering thoughts. She could push herself to limits where she'd even suffer hallucinations and chest pains. She started to develop a dependence on caffeine and stimulants, and sometimes Ji-hyun had to drag her to bed by force. Over time both her father and Ji-hyun would bring up their concerns but those concerns would be brushed off. Gyu-ri had taken over Mi-jeong's former roles in the various dynamics almost fully, and this meant she was the one expected to nag and moralize to an extent. Clyde was still struggling with his grief and had never been the sort of parent to control a household in the first place, thus he allowed Gyu-ri to do as she would, ignoring her own problems and struggles despite others being keen on them and willing to help. Gyu-ri's sophomore year saw her being more timidly experimental with things she hadn't considered while her Mom had still been scrutinizing and judging her. For her birthday she had her ears pierced and her hair dyed it's present orange, and she pursued more bold and daring fashions for a time, showing more skin and trying daring color combinations. She taught herself by experience to shop in Salvation Armies, Goodwills, and local secondhands with an expert eye and ears to the ground and with an acute awareness of the house's tighter budget. She passed these thrift skills on to friends and remains a speculative fashionista talking shop over her friends wardrobes. But, after her period of experimentation in Sophomore year Gyu-ri would return to more conservative fare, out of practical interest in both budget and a general nagging dissatisfaction with exposing skin to the elements that trumped her interest in being more stylish. Gyu-ri also finally indulged herself in her singing. Gyu-ri at first kept her involvement to a minimum, often only attending a few choir club meetings. Mackenzie Baker eventually did her a kindness when she sniffed out Gyu-ri's shyness and inertia, she spurred Gyu-ri with encouragement and a gift in the form of an inexpensive guitar. She initially preferred the acoustically driven, country tunes she'd heard often due to her parents tastes. Then eventually she began to explore school groups, she received some training from the choir teacher and her raw potential was realized to an extent. She was good enough to be one of the choirs soloists but she rejected that idea, still uncertain after all this time of taking any form of intended spotlight to herself. Around the house she was motivated to practice now that she had a proper outlet for her talent. She often kept to herself in the dead of the night when others were asleep, slowly building her ear for songwriting. She remains amateur, cynically she does not expect much but she genuinely enjoys herself. She's a strong fan of music in general, often deferring to her friend's tastes, and she often uses it to relax or tune out annoyingly loud social settings. She also returned to chess, and became a regular fixture in the school's chess club. She only plays online as she does not want to put any stress on the family budget, and she has reclaimed her old rough 1600 online elo. In Junior year she started devoting the majority of her time to working part time in retail. She's a sour employee but an effective one, and well liked by her manager for being able to handle difficult customers. Often needs to take extra time to de-stress after shifts, but besides this she finds working a job incredibly satisfying, and she's glad to be providing a little extra cash flow into her household, she can at least cover the groceries and allow Dad to divvy up a little extra cash Ji-hyun's way. The summer between Junior and Senior year Gyu-ri made some speculative efforts into contacting the family back in Korea, Mi-jeong's biological parents and extended family. She found them after some time and opened a dialogue. Due to the rift that had formed after Mi-jeong's elopement they were shocked to hear of what had happened since, that they had two granddaughters, that Mi-jeong was dead. Talks soured after the American-side family refused to come to Korea for a belated traditional funeral for Mi-jeong due to cost. A few of the more sympathetic aunts visited for a few weeks, and Gyu-ri was happy to finally meet any of the other side of her family that had been so long removed from her life. Their communications with the family has since remained cordial and forward looking, and Gyu-ri hopes to arrange a proper family visit to Korea, somewhere she's always wanted to go to experience her own culture in full depth. She hopes to go the summer after graduation. She has been managing the budget to save for this possibility. Gyu-ri's senior year has been uneventful. She continues to struggle with her maladaptive behaviors straining her schedule and often making her feel worse off than she actually is, but she tries to appreciate that her life is stable. Her father has reconsidered her working for the military if she stays off the front line, and recently he's been bonding with her, bringing her to office events to meet his friends, and to take part in political efforts alongside him. She is solidly conservative, albeit less so than her father, she has expressed disapproval of Canon's demeanor, while also approving of his military spending and security initiatives. She's recently found herself gravitating to the idea of medicine once more, though as usual she is limited by her self-doubts and passivity. Her class load has been somewhat underwhelming, she gets good grades but has no advanced classes and not much in the way of math and science. Her schedule is less homework and more friends and her home life and various hobbies, and she's also recently started attending parties more, though she still finds them generally more trouble than they are worth. She has considered experimenting with a romantic relationship, but the sometimes sexual or violent nature of her intrusive thoughts has filled her with anxiety regarding trying to formalize a relationship with a peer despite having crushes and prospects. Advantages: Gyu-ri has a strong mind for managing details and is cautious, which may allow her some advantages in formulating plans on island. She is used to being subservient when she has to be and will likely flourish in a group setting. Disadvantages: She struggles with intrusive thoughts and compulsions, that may jeopardize her stability on island. She is socially unrestrained and apathetic, and may find making allies beyond her limited social circles difficult. She's naturally loyal and helpful in spite of herself, and taking the actions needed to survive may prove difficult for her. She has natural tendencies to insomnia and may find maintaining her energy on island difficult. The above biography is as written by Cicada. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made. Other/Trivia Threads Below is a list of threads containing Gyu-ri, in chronological order. V7 Pregame: *Venipuncture *Take The High Road Prom: *Death With Dignity V7 Meanwhile: *butterflies and sutures *My Persuasion Can Build A Nation Your Thoughts Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Gyu-ri Christensen. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here! Category:V7 Meanwhile Characters